DRAFT

Local Journalism:
America’s Most Trusted
News Sources Threatened

U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, andTransportation

Ranking Member Maria Cantwell
October 2020

Local Journalism:
America’s Most Trusted
News Sources Threatened***
Local journalism is essential for healthy communities, competitive marketplaces,
and a thriving democracy.
Unfortunately, the local news industry is being decimated in the digital age. Thisis due both to the rapid proliferation of online news content as well as unfair
market practices by some of the world’s largest technology companies that reuse
local news’ content, data, customers, and advertisers. While the value of local
journalism as a trusted brand is starting to shine through to advertisers, theeconomic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic is endangering what is left oflocal journalism.
Addressing these unfair business practices and local news’ adoption of a new
business model will take time. If Americans are to continue receiving the benefitsof local journalism—transparency, fact-checking, professional editing, and highquality and timely reporting that promotes vibrant, cohesive, and diverse
communities—local news needs help to survive the current economic storm.

1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Local journalism—America’s trusted source of unbiased and accurate
information—is disappearing. This report finds that over the past two decades,
the local newspaper industry has lost around 70 percent of its total revenue.
Local broadcasters are facing similar difficulties, with advertising revenues down
more than 40 percent.
These losses are leading to news deserts. Already, 200 counties nationwide
have no newspapers covering their communities, and half of all U.S. counties aredown to just one, a problem that is particularly acute in the South. Newspapers
have been forced to let go more than 40,000 newsroom employees, a full 60
percent of the journalistic workforce that creates unique local content.
America’s local newsrooms now have thousands fewer watchdogs exposing
crime, corruption, and keeping elected officials accountable to their constituents.
Small businesses have less information on local conditions and fewer
opportunities to reach customers in their community. Communities are losing
access to trusted, non-partisan information that keeps our civil institutions
cohesive and resilient.
Americans want and appreciate the accurate and unbiased reporting that local
journalists provide. According to a 2019 Knight-Gallup study, Americans favor
local news over national news to “report the news without bias” by a two to one
margin. A 2018 Poynter Media Trust Survey likewise found that three of every
four Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in local media.
Similarly, polls find that more than eight in ten Americans want journalists to bepersonally engaged with their local area and understand their community’s
history.
Local news is irreplaceable because other sources do not have the economic
incentive or capability to credibly report on local issues. The loss of thousands ofexperienced journalists is the loss of a highly-valued resource and a process thatcannot be easily replaced. These are the professionals with the necessary
expertise to sort through news reports to determine what is real, what is fake,and what matters most to the communities they serve.
The COVID-19 crisis provides a sobering case-in-point, as Americans are turning
to local media at unprecedented levels for information about local pandemic
response and disease spread. In a public health crisis compounded by an2

economic downturn and political acrimony, local journalism is uniquely positioned
to provide unbiased facts and stories that strengthen our communities.
Unfortunately, the revenue losses and employment trends impacting local
journalism are now becoming acute as the COVID-19 crisis makes an alreadydifficult situation nearly impossible. Newspapers will likely lay off another 7,000
employees in 2020, leaving only about 30,000 newsroom jobs left nationwide. If
this rate continues, newspaper newsroom employees may all but vanish in thenext few years and, if pandemic-related revenue losses continue for TV and radio
broadcasters, local broadcasting could face a similar fate.
***
The root causes leading to the destruction of local journalism are complex but
can be attributed to two primary factors.
The first is that the rise of the Internet and digital information has fundamentally
altered how Americans receive and digest the news, disrupting journalism’s
historic business model. Besides the loss of dependable classifieds revenue, themore than 80 percent decline in advertising revenues since 2000 has been
devastating. The mass transfer of content and advertising online, combined witha proliferation of news sites, has dramatically lowered ad value and siphoned
dollars from the local newspapers that produce the content supporting those ads.
Many of today’s online consumers expect to get their local news for free.
The second major challenge is that local news has been hijacked by a few large
news aggregation platforms, most notably Google and Facebook, which havebecome the dominant players in online advertising. These trillion-dollar
companies scrape local news content and data for their own sites and leverage
their market dominance to force local news to accept little to no compensation for
their intellectual property.
At the same time, the marketplace for online advertising is now dominated byprogrammatic ads, with digital advertising services claiming half of every ad
dollar, further diverting funds away from local journalism. Today, Google andFacebook alone control 77 percent of locally-focused digital advertising revenue.
To put this market share in perspective, the ad revenues that Google is projectedto earn this year will exceed the combined ad revenues of all TV and radio
stations in the country.
When other countries have challenged these dominant players to provide
reasonable compensation or fairer terms to news publishers, they have
responded with threats, ultimatums, and actions focused on cementing the status3

quo. Now, regulators across Europe and in Australia are taking steps to ensurethat local publishers can continue to monetize their content and reachconsumers. Partly in response to these regulatory actions, Google andFacebook have announced plans to provide limited compensation to a small sliceof the news sector. Whether this compensation will be sufficient, or negotiatedon fair terms, remains to be seen.
The loss of local journalism is also correlated with a rise in corporate takeovers
and consolidation of formerly independent news outlets. Hedge funds have
scooped up venerable local newspapers at fire-sale prices and then enacted
severe cost-cutting measures that have gutted content for the sake of short-term
profits. Today, just 25 newspaper publishing groups control the fate of nearly
two-thirds of all daily papers.
These market dynamics are further compounded by a lack of public awarenessof the crisis facing local journalism. A recent poll found that 71 percent ofAmericans believe their local news media is “doing well financially.”
To their credit, facing massive disruption in the online marketplace, local news
outlets have already taken big leaps into a new business model that is based on
the trust they have earned with their audience. Local news is adjusting to theshift in print advertising revenue by adopting digital content delivery practices,
engaging with readers through paid events and partnerships, partnering withphilanthropic organizations, and exploring non-profit models, among otherinitiatives that strengthen connections between their audience and its community.
In recent years, other media industries have shown that it is possible for media
businesses that have been disrupted by the Internet to successfully evolve
themselves and thrive in the digital economy. Local journalism could be on thesame path.
To realize this potential, local journalism is benefiting from the fact that
Americans trust local news more than other news services. Public surveys haveconfirmed, by as much as a two-to-one margin, that Americans are more likely totrust local news sources. Readership levels and audience engagement havealso increased during COVID-19, as Americans are seeking out trusted news
and information specific to their communities. Many local news outlets are taking
advantage of this strength and are creating a new business model that earns
revenue by building on established news brands that stand for trustworthiness,
highly relevant local content, and greater levels of community engagement.
Leading advertisers who are growing frustrated with digital ads due to concernsof ad fraud, market opaqueness, and the placement of ads next to questionable
content are turning to local news to differentiate their products and be seen astrusted brands within the communities where they do business.
4***With these changes, a more balanced subscription and advertising model isemerging for local journalism, which is now laying the foundation for future
growth. But congressional action is needed to help local news survive the global
pandemic and onslaught of unfair practices by the dominant online platforms.
Local news needs new laws and regulations to make sure it can compete fairly
and provide its true value to local communities and American democracy.

5

CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .......................................................................................................................2
CONTENTS .........................................................................................................................................6
I. LOCAL JOURNALISM: THE KEY TO PUBLIC TRUST AND AN INFORMED CITIZENRY ...........................7
LOCAL JOURNALISM OCCUPIES A UNIQUE PLACE OF PUBLIC TRUST.....................................................................7
COVID-19 PANDEMIC RESPONSE HIGHLIGHTS THE VALUE OF LOCAL JOURNALISM ................................................8
REASONS FOR THE PUBLIC’S TRUST .............................................................................................................9
PUBLIC OPINION REGARDING LOCAL JOURNALISM’S ROLE IN DEMOCRACY ......................................................... 12
II. LOCAL JOURNALISM: THE DIFFICULT TRANSITION TO DIGITAL ................................................... 14
THE DISRUPTION OF JOURNALISM’S BUSINESS MODEL .................................................................................. 14
RAPID DECLINE IN LOCAL NEWS REVENUES ................................................................................................ 17
THE IMPACT ON NEWSROOMS ................................................................................................................ 19
AMERICA FACES A FUTURE OF EXPANDING NEWS DESERTS ............................................................................ 23
CONSOLIDATION BY FINANCIAL FIRMS INTERESTED IN PROFITS, NOT JOURNALISM ............................................... 24
AMERICANS ARE UNAWARE OF THE CHALLENGES FACING LOCAL NEWS............................................................. 25
III. LOCAL JOURNALISM: FACES UNFAIR PRACTICES FROM ONLINE PLATFORMS ............................. 27
UNFAIR PRACTICES BY NEWS AGGREGATION PLATFORMS .............................................................................. 27
INTENTIONALLY DIVERTING WEB TRAFFIC AWAY FROM LOCAL NEWS ............................................................... 30
GOOGLE’S “ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES” FORMAT HARMS LOCAL JOURNALISM ............................................... 31
LOCAL NEWS FACES ONLINE CHOKE POINTS ............................................................................................... 33
IV. LOCAL JOURNALISM: A TRUSTED BRAND ADAPTING TO THE DIGITAL AGE ................................ 35
TRUSTED BRAND AS A VALUE DIFFERENTIATOR ........................................................................................... 35
NEW DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS .................................................................................................... 41
LESSONS FROM DISRUPTION OF OTHER MEDIA INDUSTRIES ............................................................................ 45
LOCAL NEWS WALLOPED BY COVID-19 .................................................................................................... 49
V. CONGRESSIONAL CONSIDERATIONS .......................................................................................... 53
CONGRESS HAS A LONG HISTORY OF SUPPORTING LOCAL JOURNALISM ............................................................. 54
CURRENT AND SUGGESTED CONGRESSIONAL CONSIDERATIONS TO SAVE LOCAL NEWS .......................................... 55
VI. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 57

6

I. LOCAL JOURNALISM: THE KEY TO
PUBLIC TRUST AND AN INFORMED
CITIZENRY
Local news producers create valuable homegrown content that generates trust among
readers and viewers.

Local Journalism Occupies a Unique Place of Public Trust
The American public trusts local journalism based on its long history of unbiased
reporting, factual accuracy, and its connection to and understanding of thecommunities it covers.
Surveys of Americans underscore this point. The 2018 Poynter Media Trust
Survey found that 76 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “a fair amount”
of trust in their local television news, and 73 percent have confidence in local
newspapers.1
Similarly, according to a 2019 Knight-Gallup study, Americans trust local news
more than national news.2 The study found that Americans tend to rate local
news more positively than national news on a variety of metrics, including
reporting the news without bias and getting the facts right. Sixty-six percent ofrespondents in the Knight-Gallup study trusted local news to “report the news
without bias,” compared to 31 percent of respondents saying they trusted
national news organizations to do so. Similarly, 59 percent of Knight-Gallup
respondents trusted local news to “get the facts right,” compared to 39 percent ofrespondents saying they trusted national news to do so.
Moreover, the public sees great value in their news providers being part of theircommunity. According to a 2018 Pew Research Center poll, an overwhelming 85
percent of Americans say it is at least somewhat important for journalists tounderstand their community’s history, with 81 percent wanting reporters to bepersonally engaged with their local area.3
Focusing on local newspapers, the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community
Issues has described local papers’ impact this way:4

7

“In almost every community the local paper is the first recorder ofnews…
There is always going to be a digital element to the news
reporting from now on. But unless that digital source meets
print’s standards of balanced reporting, fact checking andprofessional editing it will never have the credibility attached toprint.”
Peter Wagner, writing for theInstitute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

The balance, integrity, and credibility that local journalism uniquely provides is so
important to communities and our nation because it is where Americans get theirnews. A 2010 Pew Research Center study of news reporting in Baltimore foundthat most of what the public learned was driven by local reporting. That study
concluded that 95 percent of stories that contained new information derived itfrom traditional local media, whether print, local TV, or radio.5

COVID-19 Pandemic Response Highlights the Value of Local
Journalism
Americans are turning to local media at unprecedented levels for information
about local pandemic response and disease spread. In April, Horowitz Researchfound that 58 percent of Americans reported consuming more local news than
before the COVID-19 crisis.6
This is true even of younger Americans aged 18 to 34, 53 percent of whom
reported increasing their local news consumption since the crisis began.7 The
Dallas Morning News reports that during the pandemic, “Page views are up 90
percent...Users are up 70 percent. New Users are up 75 percent. Sessions areup 96 percent.”88Some newspapers, such as the Seattle Times, the Tampa Bay Times, and theColorado Sun, have also reported gaining new subscribers during the pandemic.9
The increase in subscribers during the crisis underscores the unique value local
journalism provides communities.
The following quoted letter from a new subscriber to the Colorado Sun isrepresentative of many readers’ views on local news coverage of the pandemic:“Your reporting during the COVID-19 crisis has been top-drawer and has inspired
me finally to execute the much overdue annual subscription ‘donation.”10
Local television stations also are experiencing higher viewership during the
pandemic. In the top 25 markets, local news viewership increased by 52 percent
in the first week of March among 18-34 year-olds, and up 83 percent during thesecond week of March compared to the same week in 2019.11 According to the
National Association of Broadcasters, TV and radio stations have run hundredsof thousands of COVID-19 public service announcements since the beginning of
the pandemic. These announcements include critical information on how to help
prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Reasons for the Public’s Trust
Local News Promotes Accurate and Comprehensive Information
Local news plays an important role in limiting false, inaccurate, and incomplete
information. A vibrant local news environment ensures that news outlets act as acheck on each other, since competition incentivizes greater disclosures of
information and fosters greater pressure to get the story right.
Industry analysts believe that competition also likely raises news quality byencouraging media to reveal information they know rather than participating in
the formation of an “information cartel,” where outlets withhold sensitive or
damaging reporting.
In 2004, CBS News received photos and videos of detainee abuse in Iraq’s Abu
Ghraib prison, the release of which was accelerated when it became known thatthe photos began to circulate elsewhere and other journalists were planning tomove forward with the story.12
Local journalism also covers stories that are unique to local communities and thatwill be overlooked by other media outlets. Reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic
is a prime example of how local journalism provides communities with essential
information they need in times of crisis. Across the United States, it is local

9reporting—not national news, news aggregators, or government—that iscompiling and synthetizing essential information such as:
•
•
•
•
•

Awareness of community spread and local hot spots
Business opening decisions and regulations
Local public health directives
School health codes
Local employment opportunities

Local News Acts as a Check on Government and Enhances Civic Engagement
Local news performs an essential oversight role that allows our democracy tothrive. As former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously
articulated, “Sunlight is said to the best of disinfectants; electric light the mostefficient policeman.”13
Local news reporters can be found attending town halls and school and zoning
board meetings, following activities at the courthouse, and holding local officials
accountable at municipal press conferences. They conduct oversight on issues
that have a direct impact on their readers’ everyday lives. One investigative
journalist in North Carolina, Pat Stith, drove investigations over the course of his
36-year career that reportedly led to 31 new state laws and immeasurable statewide impact.14
Local journalists are frequent usersof the Freedom of Information Act(“FOIA”) to monitor federal agency
records, uncover wrongdoing, andshed light on misuses of funding
and power. According to one
Pulitzer Prize-winning local news
reporter with the Sacramento Bee
who files between 75 and 150 FOIA
requests and appeals each year,
reporters who do not use FOIA are
missing the full story.15“Reporters who don’t use FOIA
are missing what everyone else is
not seeing, the information that’s
not given out at press
conferences or in press
releases—information thegovernment would rather you not
see.”
Russell Carollo
The Sacramento Bee

There are numerous examples ofcases in which local journalists’ open records requests have shed light on, andthus curbed, corruption and problematic practices.

10In one such example, the Seattle Times exposed a systemic shortcoming inpolice response times to 911 calls.16 The Seattle Times examined data from
more than 180,000 priority-one 911 calls placed between 2010 and 2014 andfound that, although the Seattle Police Department stated that all priority-one
calls have a target response time of seven minutes, certain metro areas
experienced significantly faster response times—some just under five minutes,
others up to nearly 14 minutes.17 The newspaper also revealed that while theresponse to a call from an officer in need of help clocked in at under two minutes,
the citywide average response time for domestic violence calls was more thanten minutes, and the response to an in-progress violation of a restraining order
was 15 minutes.18 Following the Seattle Times’ story, the Seattle Police
Department added additional 911 network lines, increased staffing at its callcenter, improved its computer-aided dispatch system, and launched a Real Time
Crime Center to analyze 911 data and trends and help officers respond more
efficiently.19
When newspapers close or reduce their news coverage, the loss of government
oversight can substantially increase the cost of local government, increase taxes,
and reduce government efficiency and civic engagement. Finance professors at
the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Notre Dame found thatwith fewer news watchdogs, government salaries rise, deficits increase, andgovernment borrowing costs go up by five to 11 basis points.20,21 The loss of a
local newspaper is also associated with lower civic engagement, weaker
community ties, and drops in voter turnout.22,23
Journalism professor Penny Muse Abernathy described another example of how
corruption can germinate and thrive in the absence of local news. Professor
Abernathy cited the recent case of a North Carolina campaign consultant who,
operating in a county with little local media coverage, ran a network that illegallycollected absentee ballots, sometimes completing them, to boost a congressional
candidate. Election officials eventually detected the fraud, overturned theelection results, and ordered a new vote. “The residents of the 9th District [were]deprived of a representative in Congress for almost a year,” Abernathy said,“because of significant election fraud that flew under the radar of severely
understaffed local and regional newspapers, as well the state’s broadcast anddigital outlets.24
Local journalism also plays a role in protecting the health of local communities by
exposing polluters. A recent study in the Journal of Environmental Economics
and Management found that toxic emissions from consumer goods production
plants declined 29 percent when they were covered by local newspapers ascompared to plants that were not scrutinized.25

11Local News Supports the Economy
Local news plays a key role in reporting information that is necessary for theefficient functioning of markets.
The influential 20th century economist, Friedrich Hayek, considered accurate
local information essential for the price-setting activity that underlies the efficient
functioning of markets.26 In his view, accurate local-level pricing brings about theproper allocation of goods and resources because it signals local conditions to allactors within the national economy.
Modern economic literature views this issue through the lens of “information
economics” or “asymmetric information,” which is now recognized as a basic
tenet of economics.27 In 2001, the Nobel Prize in Economics was given forbreakthroughs in understanding markets with imperfect information.28 Joseph
Stiglitz, one of the economists who shared the Nobel Prize for this work, said, “It
is now recognized that information is imperfect, obtaining information can be
costly, and the extent of information asymmetries is affected by actions of firms
and individuals.”29
In lay terms, economists across thepolitical spectrum agree that
increased reporting on local
conditions leads to fairer prices forgoods.30 A decline in local
journalism and the ensuing decreasein available information results inmarket inefficiencies.

A decline in local journalism andthe ensuing decrease in available
information results in market
inefficiencies

Public Opinion Regarding Local Journalism’s Role in Democracy
Though its importance may not always be top of mind, a large majority ofAmericans consider local journalism to be a crucial element of our democracy. A
Knight survey recently found that 70 percent of Americans spontaneously
responded that local news was “very important” or “critical” to democracy, andwhen presented with information about the role of local news in support ofdemocracy, that number grew to 84 percent.31 The same Knight survey also
found that the vast majority of Americans—86 percent of survey respondents—
believe that everyone should have access to local news, even if they do not pay
for it.32

12

Local news sources are even more critical for Americans who live in rural andTribal areas or are members of minority communities who too often lack accessto broadband Internet or are unable to use it due to the high cost. The ability to
subscribe to high-quality Internet connections is too often dependent onsocioeconomic status, with lower-income homes opting for slower speeds oraccessing the Internet solely through mobile devices.33 For those Americans
without adequate Internet access, local print newspapers and broadcasters that
address community needs remain essential for civic engagement.

13

II. LOCAL JOURNALISM: THE DIFFICULT
TRANSITION TO DIGITAL
The rise of the Internet and the corresponding migration of advertising revenue fromlocal news to large, multinational online platforms has significantly disrupted local
journalism’s business model.

The Disruption of Journalism’s Business Model
Competition from Free Online NewsThe news consumption habits of consumers have changed significantly as news
content and advertising moved online. Consumers have found numerous
sources of free news and turned to specialty websites, such as Craigslist, forservices previously provided by local newspapers’ classified sections.34
With the vast majority of Americans now accessing online content through ahandful of dominant gateways, online news readers often skim through headlines
and read only snippets found on search engines or social media sites without
linking to the original sources for more information. According to one study, 47
percent of these users only “browse and read news extracts on these websites
without clicking on links to access the whole article in the newspaper page.” 35This has made it much more difficult for news publishers to earn subscription
revenue. If news is free, why pay for a subscription?
Online Advertising Cripples Ad
Revenues“[Social media] make[s] a ton ofmoney because their inventory is
so huge. They go to the bankwhile they slowly destroy our
pricing structure.”

The barriers to entry for thedevelopment of web-based news
content are very low. As a result, thesupply of news content andcorresponding ad space hasballooned. The more ad inventory
became ubiquitous and more like acommodity, the more the price ofadvertising declined.

Newspaper Industry Executive

14

The table below provides a snapshot of the cost of advertising across different
media in 2015.36 The first two columns show the cost of advertising in the Los
Angeles Times in print and digital. The third column shows the cost of a Google
search ad. While pricing for similar advertisements vary based on a host offactors, including size, placement, and targeting, this table shows how dramaticthe scale of these price differences can be.
Cost to Advertisers to Reach 400,000 Readers (2015)
Los Angeles Times Print

Los Angeles Times Digital

Google Search$40,000$5,600$16

User Profiles Drive Targeted Ads
As digital distribution has grown, so has an increased focus by advertisers on
targeting specific readers at the lowest cost, wherever they browse online.
This change has given a huge advantage to companies with access to deep user
profiles that can track users across the web and deliver targeted advertising.
Online search, social media, and other new advertising platforms created precise
consumer demographic segments and began competing for ad revenue withlocal newspapers. These low-overhead online advertising alternatives started
making huge profits, while revenues for local journalism went into free fall.
Programmatic Advertising Placement Now Dominates Digital Ads
The widespread adoption of programmatic advertising is another key dynamic
undercutting local journalism’s historic business model. In a programmatic
model, advertising is delivered using automated ad technology (“ad tech”) rather
than human ad buyers and is based on detailed user profiles, including aviewer’s browsing and purchasing history and their precise location.
One consequence of the programmatic model is that the direct connection
between local news publishers and the advertisers that fund their operations islost. When machines are buying ads and the human element is removed,
advertisers often do not even know where their ads will be placed.
A number of advertising technology companies now sit in the middle of thisrelationship, controlling the connection between sellers and buyers. That means
sellers take home less money for the ads they sell, and it also means advertising15

practices have become more opaque and vulnerable to unfair competition.
Programmatic advertising placement now dominates digital ads and accounts foraround 85 percent of online digital advertising.37 By 2021, eMarketer predicts
that nearly 88 percent of all U.S. digital display ad dollars, or $81 billion, will flow
via programmatic automation.38
The challenge for local news is that, while digital ad spending has skyrocketed,publishers receive less of the value of each ad from programmatic advertising. A
newspaper executive put it this way: “Technology partners are out there, withmany wanting a heavy revenue share (40 to 50 percent) for the technology...
while we still have to do the heavy lifting... content creation to capture theaudience, sales expense, etc.”39
A PricewaterhouseCoopers study conducted and released this year thatanalyzed several major retail and technology brands in the United Kingdom
found that publishers tend to receive only half of what the advertiser spends on a
programmatic ad.40
News Publishers Receive Only Half of Ad Revenue, 15% Unaccounted For

49% ofprogrammatic
ad revenue
not captured
by publishers

In other words, a significant portion of ad revenue now goes to programmatic
middlemen instead of directly to publishers who created the content supporting
the ad.

16

One startling finding in the study was the discovery that, on average and despite
the best efforts of the researchers, 15 percent of the money spent on
programmatic ads cannot even be accounted for. In fact, opaque businesspractices and deception have been singled out as fundamental problems with
programmatic advertising. Relatedly, in 2015, Facebook reportedly announced
viewership levels between 150 and 900 percent greater than actual levels.41 The
fraudulent viewership data led many advertisers to increase spending on
Facebook as opposed to other media options.42
Another concern with the transition to digital distribution and accurate pricing for
programmatic advertising is fake traffic—phony ad impressions that do notprovide real value to advertisers. In these operations, computer programs calledbots act like real people and click on and respond to online ads, thereby
generating revenue for websites that in reality have far fewer actual readers.
This activity inflates the number of “eyeballs” that appear to have seen an ad,
costing advertisers more money without giving them access to real consumers inreturn. The prevalence of advertising fraud undercuts faith in online advertisingand drives down advertising revenues across the board, reducing the amount ofmoney for which local news sites can compete.

Rapid Decline in Local News Revenues
The newspaper business has historically relied heavily on advertising revenues,
which comprised approximately 80 percent of overall newspaper revenue before
the Great Recession in 2008.43 Today, local news content receives just a
fraction of the advertising dollars they used to. According to the Pew ResearchCenter, newspapers’ ad revenue declined approximately 70 percent between
2000 and 2018, while at the same time circulation revenue has only marginally
increased.44

17Advertising and Circulation Revenue of the Newspaper Industry

Approximately
70% decline inadvertising
revenuebetween 2000
and 2018

As shown in the graph above, newspaper advertising and circulation revenue
grew throughout the second half of the 20th century, weathering economic crises
and growing alongside numerous technological changes, including the expansionof broadcast television and television news in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as
the development of cable news channels in the 1980s and 1990s.
However, the newspaper industry has struggled to overcome the challenges of
the Internet age, as advertising revenue models have been steadily undermined.
Between 2000 and 2019, overall U.S. newspaper revenue declined byapproximately 60 percent.45 Additional losses due to COVID-19 will be
substantial—the total loss of revenue since 2000 is now approaching 70
percent.46

18

The Impact on Newsrooms
Local News Forced to Lay off Majority of its Workforce
The rapid decline in local news revenues has been devastating, forcing thenewspaper industry to let go over approximately 60 percent of its journalistic
workforce—40,000 newsroom employees—since 2005.47
The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating these startling losses: 7,000 newspaper
newsroom jobs are expected to be lost in 2020 alone.48 Provided below is astate-by-state breakdown of newspaper newsroom job losses between 2005 and2020.

State-by-State Breakdown of Newsroom Job Losses Since 2005
Newsroom
State

Employment(2005)

Job Loss% Job Loss(2005-2020)

Since 2005

Alabama

902

433

-48%

Alaska

179

120

-67%

Arizona

1,008

488

-48%

Arkansas

515

349

-68%

California

7,458

3,961

-53%

Colorado

1,248

737

-59%

Connecticut

942

658

-70%

Delaware

207

159

-77%

D.C.

2,115

749

-35%

Florida

3,392

2,037

-60%

Georgia

1,275

491

-38%

Hawaii

348

264

-76%

Idaho

302

154

-51%

19

Illinois

3,550

2,313

-65%

Indiana

1,457

1,019

-70%

Iowa

970

686

-71%

Kansas

748

514

-69%

Kentucky

793

416

-52%

Louisiana

728

407

-56%

Maine

478

310

-65%

Maryland

1,393

758

-54%

Massachusetts

2,142

1,549

-72%

Michigan

2,169

1,646

-76%

Minnesota

1,565

1,252

-80%

Mississippi

406

306

-75%

Missouri

983

557

-57%

Montana

222

98

-44%

Nebraska

551

362

-66%

Nevada

334

140

-42%

New Hampshire

350

286

-82%

New Jersey

2,889

2,325

-80%

New Mexico

504

428

-85%

New York

8,754

3,265

-37%

North Carolina

1,641

1,000

-61%

North Dakota

245

151

-62%

Ohio

2,846

1,695

-60%

Oklahoma

833

513

-62%

Oregon

872

579

-66%

Pennsylvania

2,886

2,048

-71%

Rhode Island

272

233

-86%

20

South Carolina

588

344

-59%

South Dakota

299

231

-77%

Tennessee

1,153

686

-59%

Texas

4,033

2,400

-60%

Utah

405

104

-26%

Vermont

190

142

-75%

Virginia

1,703

976

-57%

Washington

1,587

1,067

-67%

West Virginia

340

166

-49%

Wisconsin

1,347

936

-70%

Wyoming

143

64

-45%

Puerto Rico

341

175

-51%

72,600-42,747

-59%

Total

The rise of digital advertising has also decreased revenue for radio and television
media. From 2000-2018, local TV stations’ advertising revenue fell by 40
percent, after accounting for inflation.49 The ad revenues of FM stations droppedby 43.8 percent in inflation-adjusted terms from 2003 to 2018.50

21

Local Journalists Will be Difficult to Replace
The toll on professional journalists has been heavy.51 In addition to layoffs, local
journalists have faced pay reductions and significant furloughs.52 It is importantto keep in mind that journalism is a skill that requires commitment and extensive
training.
Moreover, while the channels through which news is transmitted have changed
dramatically over the last two decades, the loss of thousands of experienced
journalists represents the loss of a highly-valued resource that cannot be easily
replaced—these are the professionals with the expertise necessary to sort
through news reports to determine what is real, what is fake, and what mattersmost to the communities served.
Unfortunately, as shown below, these lost newsroom jobs have not beenregained in other news-producing industries.53

22

America Faces a Future of Expanding News Deserts
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, these trends led to the failure of
thousands of newsrooms across the country, including century-old major
metropolitan dailies, such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky
Mountain News.54,55
Since 2004, one-fifth of U.S. newspapers have closed or merged. The result,according to the University of North Carolina, is that over 200 U.S. counties now
lack a local newspaper, and half of all U.S. counties are down to just one.56

The loss of local newspapers matters because local newspapers continue tohave an outsized impact on the nation’s original reporting. America’s local
newsrooms are the watchdogs exposing crime, corruption, and keeping elected
officials accountable to their constituents. They provide small businesses with
irreplaceable information on local conditions and targeted opportunities to reachcustomers in their community.
News deserts also reduce exposure of terrible crimes and abuses because local
journalists are often the first to break or significantly amplify stories of nationalsignificance. From the exposure of Larry Nassar’s crimes against minors by the
IndyStar, to the investigation of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein by the Miami

23

Herald, to reporting on contaminated water in Flint, Michigan, by the Flint Journaland Michigan Radio, to the uncovering of abuses in the Catholic Church by the
Boston Globe, local journalism played a key role in bringing criminals to accountand protecting citizens at both a local and national level.
Recent studies have also shown that the economic threats to local news are
impacting news outlets focused on serving minority communities.57,58 For
example, New America Media, a news agency and coalition of around 3,000
minority-focused media outlets, folded in 2017 due to financial difficulties.59
These losses have significant impact on disadvantaged communities. According
to multiple news outlets, mainstream media often underreports issues such as
crimes against minorities, highlighting the need for newspapers serving minority
communities.60,61
Moreover, given the consistent digital divide impacting minority communities that
do not have adequate Internet access, print newspapers and local broadcasters
remain essential for keeping many communities engaged and informed.
According to the National Association of broadcasters, communities of color
continue to rely on free local TV and radio broadcast stations more than thegeneral U.S. population.

Consolidation by Financial Firms Interested in Profits, Not Journalism
As more and more local newspapers fell on hard times during the transition todigital, a wave of acquisitions swept through the industry, leading to rapid
consolidation and the formation of a small number of massive newspaper
publishing groups, like Tribune Publishing, McClatchy, and Gannett.62 Today,
just 25 companies control the fate of nearly two-thirds of all daily papers
nationwide.63
This market consolidation has been accelerated by a series of mega-mergers
orchestrated and financed by hedge funds and private equity firms. A prominent
example is the $1.7 billion financial commitment by Alden Capital, which plans togenerate returns through aggressive cost-cutting.64 News industry analyst Ken
Doctor explains that this revenue model calls for extracting capital from a sector
in decline while minimizing re-investment.65 Similarly, industry analyst Steve
Waldman writes, “the acquisition of newspapers by private equity and hedge
funds has contributed mightily, along with the digital disruption of advertising, tothe decline of local news.”66

24

A former reporter at the Monterey Herald described life at the newspaper after
acquisition by Alden Capital: “Under Alden’s tenure, layoffs and attrition
accelerated at breakneck speed. Instead of a story a day, reporters scrambled tocrank out two or three because there were fewer and fewer of us. The officesupplies vanished, and we had to buy our own pens, calendars, and manila
folders. Then the hot water in the bathrooms was turned off. The gutters were
never repaired, and staff creatively arranged house plants to try to soak up theleaks.”67

Americans Are Unaware of the Challenges Facing Local News
While Americans have shown overwhelming support for their local news sources,
they are largely unaware of the financial challenges facing the industry. In
response to a 2019 Pew Research Poll, 71 percent of adults responded that they
believe their local news media is “doing well financially.”68 Additionally, only 14
percent responded that they had paid for local news in the previous year.69

25

Without broader public understanding of the financial challenges facing local
journalism and the industry practices that are exploiting their content, the local
news industry could all but disappear in the next few years.

26III. LOCAL JOURNALISM: FACES UNFAIRPRACTICES FROM ONLINE PLATFORMS
The mass transfer of content and advertising online has enabled a few large news
aggregation platforms to employ unfair practices that take local news publishers’
content, data, customers, and advertisers.

Unfair Practices by News Aggregation Platforms
Although local journalism has faced numerous challenges adapting to the new
media landscape, they are also confronting unfair practices by some of thelargest technology companies in the world.
A few large news aggregation platforms, most notably Google and Facebook,have become the dominant players in the monetization of online news
advertising.
 Google reportedly controls 88 percent of the general search engine
market.70
 Facebook reportedly controls 74 percent of the social media market.71
 Google and Facebook reportedly control 77 percent of locally-focused
digital advertising revenue.72
Unfair Terms: The dominance of search and social media services has createda trap for local news outlets, who are left with two choices—both of which
threaten them without competitive alternatives.
Local journalists are often asked to provide their content to news aggregation
platforms for free, allowing the platforms to host the content and collect valuable
user data from it. This model strengthens the platforms’ ability to sell targeted
advertising to online readers and viewers of local journalism, while weakening
news publishers’ ability to do the same. The News Media Alliance estimates thatthese types of arrangements can result in lower advertising revenues and fewer
subscription conversions, leading to significant annual revenue loss nationwide.
If local journalists refuse to provide content rights to the platforms, they lose theopportunity to be featured by Google and Facebook and seen by their users.
The platforms use their market position to force local news into “take it or leave it”
contracts, which limit the ability for local news companies to be fairly

27

compensated. If a news outlet wants a summary of its content featured in mobile
formats created by the platforms, the news outlet typically must agree to acontract that allows the platforms to obtain the content without fair financial
compensation and collect user data from those who view it, among otherprovisions.73 The benefit to the news outlet is the possibility that readers will click
on a link to its site to learn more. However, this arrangement also results in a
disproportionate share of overall advertising revenue flowing to the platforms
instead of the content creators on their individual news sites, where building a
relationship and traffic is key to sustaining long-term revenue.
The popularity of the major news aggregation platforms with readers means they
can push local newspapers into providing local news content to them under these
unfair terms.
Reuse of Local News’ Content Without Compensation: The platforms havecreated news aggregation sites that use the content produced by local
journalists, while providing only indirect benefits to local news in return. The
platforms—such as Google Search—take local news content under the “fair use”
doctrine of copyright law, arguing that the reuse of local news’ headlines, story
snippets, and images is a “fair use” of the copyrighted work. But the applicationof fair use in this context, by allowing platforms to take significant and key
substance from local news without proper compensation, has made fair use an
economic weapon for the online platforms.
Likewise, news has become a core aspect of Facebook’s service, with asubstantial majority of its users reporting being attracted to the news content
featured there.74 For many users, Facebook’s news tab is just one of five default
permanent tabs (home, account, groups, news, and notifications) that remain
prominent whenever its app is in use, providing users the ability to find news at
any time on Facebook’s platform and limiting traffic to local news websites. The
result is that Facebook receives billions in profits from the news content createdby others and benefits from a self-reinforcing dynamic that helps Facebook keep
its users coming back.
This change has further depleted local newspapers’ advertising revenues, asconsumers of digital news spend an increasing amount of time on websites
controlled by third parties, because the contracts and other impediments createdby the platforms prevent local news outlets from being fairly compensated.

28

Facebook Acquires News Content from Journalists to Increase ProductUse for Nearly 75% of its Users

Facebook has reportedly offered some licensing fees to a limited number ofpublishers in exchange for the use of their content, including ABC News, Dow
Jones, The Washington Post, and Bloomberg.75 These agreements only coverabout one-quarter of the local news services whose content Facebook displays,
with offers ranging from $3 million per year for national news outlets to several
hundred thousand dollars a year for regional publications.76 The remaining
publishers are uncompensated for the use of their content.77
Similarly, according to recent reports, Google has signed agreements with close
to 200 publications as part of a news licensing pilot program in Germany and29

Brazil, known as Google News Showcase, and is considering a similar programin the United States.78 Google has pledged to provide $1 billion over the next
three years to news publishers as part of this program,79 but that still likely
represents just a fraction of the total revenue lost by local news outlets.

Intentionally Diverting Web Traffic Away From Local News
The market for online news dissemination is further distorted by the dominant
news aggregation platforms’ ability to reduce traffic to local news sites by making
their content harder to find if the local news services choose not to provide it on
the platforms’ terms.
In one high-profile example, The
Wall Street Journal found that when
“If you don’t sign up for ‘first click
it decided not to participate in afree’, you virtually disappear from
Google news program—“first clicka search.”free”—that allowed Google users to
bypass the Wall Street Journal
Robert Thomson
paywall, online traffic to The Wall
CEO, News Corp
Street Journal from Google droppedby 44 percent.80 This is not an
isolated concern. Robert Thomson,chief executive of News Corp, has commented that publishers must comply or
they will disappear from Google Search.81
When other countries have made it mandatory for Google to compensate news
content creators for the use of summaries, Google has responded by reducing its
news-focused services in those countries. For instance, when Spain passed alaw requiring online services to pay licensing fees for displaying summaries ofnews content in 2014, Google discontinued its Google News service in Spainrather than pay fees.82 It appears that Google preferred to protect its exploitativemodel rather than create a precedent that would benefit local news companies.
News publishers in Spain saw reduced referral growth for several years following
this, but organic growth without the help of referrals from Google has returned inrecent years.83 This type of organic growth without Google is consistent with thenotion that Google News can act as a substitute for publisher landing pages andthat the absence of Google News for all publishers may not have a large impact
on traffic to publishers’ websites over time.84 Web traffic directly to a publisher’s
website is generally described as more valuable to publishers than click-throughsfrom Google.8530

Google’s “Accelerated Mobile Pages” Format Harms Local
Journalism
The news aggregation platforms’ increasing market power has coincided with thearrival of mobile devices like smart phones. Mobile devices have become almost
ubiquitous since the iPhone was introduced in 2007, and since 2017, more thanhalf of all Internet content has been consumed on mobile devices.86
In recent years, Google and Facebook each instituted mobile-optimized formats
for news content and used these formats to create platforms designed to further
increase their market power over local news.87
In 2015, Google developed a content format optimized for smartphones known
as Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”).88 The AMP format enables fast loading
times, and Google strongly encourages news publishers to make their content
available in this format—according to the News Media Alliance, Google will
downgrade search rankings for newspaper content that does not meet load timerequirements. Thus, Google effectively mandates AMP formatting.89 News
content that is not made available in the AMP format may not appear in Google’sNews Carousel, which showcases articles for readers.90
In order to comply with the AMP format, publishers must allow Google to host thecontent on Google’s web servers and must agree to allow Google to present theircontent in virtually any context Google chooses. Further, publishers must sign
over broad rights to Google that allow Google to use news outlets’ content in any
Google products.
The following image illustrates how this works in practice.

31

Readers of the Denver Post Sent to Google to Access the Story on
Google’s AMP Platform /Google Captures User Data

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

In the image above, a mobile device user has searched on Google for a local
interest news topic and has been shown multiple search results in Screenshot 1.
The top results are featured in a carousel format in Screenshot 1. When the user
clicks on the link to the article in their local paper, the content is displayed as if it
is being provided by the local paper, when in fact it is being displayed by Google,
as is shown in Screenshot 2. Google generally derives ad services revenue fromthese pages91 and also controls access to valuable marketing data collected
about the user. In 2015, Facebook implemented a tactic similar to AMP, known
as Instant Articles.

32

Google’s AMP format harms local news in multiple ways. First, the format makes
publishers expend significant resources to comply. Second, the format allows
Google to collect data about who is viewing the local news content, which allows
Google to serve ads to that consumer elsewhere on the web. As a result of
AMP, the publisher loses exclusivity over its readers’ data, empowering Google
to compete against the publisher to serve ads to the publishers’ own consumers.

Local News Faces Online Choke Points
The impact of each of the practices described above on local journalism—thetaking of publishers’ content, diverting traffic away from local publishers, andmobile format requirements—could be lessened with more competition in themarketplace. More competitors in general search and social media would mean
additional gateways to local news and a greater ability for publishers to negotiate
the rights to their content. But the lack of competition in online search and social
media and the growth of the platforms create a choke point that Google andFacebook control and that local news believes it must pass through to reachreaders. This market structure is eliminating fair opportunities for local publishers
to leverage the value of the content they create. A failed market for online local
news means diminished voices and a society that has fewer venues for truth andvalued, reliable information.
In recognition that the dominant search and social media players are negatively
impacting the local news marketplace, and of the rise of unfair practices by those
platforms, U.S. antitrust authorities are currently conducting multiple antitrust
investigations regarding the practices of these platforms.
Attorneys General from 48 states, plus Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, haveinitiated an investigation into the allegedly monopolistic practices Google used togain dominance in the online advertising market.92 The Department of Justice’s(“DOJ”) recently-filed lawsuit into the platforms’ practices also attempts to restore
competition in the search advertising market and the search market.93 TheFederal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has a task force to look at antitrust issues in
the Internet economy, which will also have a focus on online advertising.
In the last several years, other countries have added new regulatory powers toaddress digital platform abuses, but the U.S. has not addressed the unfair
practices described above.94 U.S. antitrust law has evolved over the last few
decades to become more focused on an increasingly narrow set of harms tocompetition, which may only address some of the practices and market
conditions that have unfolded for journalism in the digital market.95

33

Taking news content and diverting web traffic are some of the unfair market
practices facing local journalism that may be difficult to fully remedy undercurrent U.S. antitrust law. In addition, antitrust prosecutions take many years tocomplete and most likely cannot restore enough advertising revenue to help themany local newspapers facing immediate risks to their solvency. The issues
involving antitrust actions and the challenges in using current consumer andcompetition protections at the FTC may call for new or expanded authorities toaddress these unfair practices.
Congress has acted in the past to make sure that there is a fair balance incompensation when there is a disparity in power between news content creatorsand their distributors. The best example of this is local broadcast television
retransmission consent. In its earliest form, broadcast television stations bothcreated local content (primarily news) and served as the sole distributors of that
content to the public through their broadcast signal. Broadcasters funded theirnews, public affairs, and other local programming by selling local advertising
priced relative to the reach and popularity of their broadcast signal. As the TV ad
market fractured from cable and satellite competition, local TV stations faced afunding crisis. Congress provided relief to local TV stations with the passage of
the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992,96 which
created the retransmission consent system. At its core, retransmission consent
ensures that local TV stations receive fair compensation for the value of theirprogramming (especially local news). Through retransmission consent, cableand satellite companies pay a portion of the monthly subscription fees back to
local TV stations to compensate them for the value of their programming, andbroadcasters reinvest that compensation in developing local news programming.
There is a clear need for Congress to address the market failures created by thesearch and social media platforms. The platforms’ continued practices of taking
publishers’ online content without proper compensation, diverting user traffic
away from local news websites, and using formats like AMP to obtain data about
local news consumers are unfair and abusive practices the FTC needs to enforce
against. The need for new authorities for the FTC to address these practices isevident. Consumer protection is central to ensuring that local media is there toprovide a diversity of voices and truthful information sought by communities.
Sustaining the ability for local news to hold government to account cannot be
displaced. The information and oversight that local news provides has been thefoundation of our past and the guideway to our future, and new authority at the
FTC to protect local news is a necessity.

34

IV. LOCAL JOURNALISM: A TRUSTED
BRAND ADAPTING TO THE DIGITAL
AGE
Trustworthy news is relevant to local communities and has a core value proposition thatcan succeed in a digital age.
Local news outlets across the country are working to adapt to the new market
landscape by shifting their primary revenue sources away from advertising andcirculation to a more balanced portfolio of revenue streams. Many outlets are
adopting innovative new funding opportunities that leverage the heritage of trust
local news has earned from its readers and viewers. Readers benefit from more
flexible ways to access content and new opportunities to engage with their local
communities. Many of these opportunities are starting to shine through, but it will
still take the industry years to adjust to the new digital marketplace.

Trusted Brand as a Value Differentiator
As laid out early in this report, local journalism occupies a unique position of
public trust and is crucial to making accurate and complete information available
to the public. Reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic is a prime example of thisphenomenon. Since the beginning of the health crisis, Americans haveincreased their reliance on local news for information about nearby outbreaks,
medical resources, and household support programs.
This local reporting on issues of high concern to the public, delivered by trusted
messengers, is exactly the kind of credible context and engaged audience thatadvertisers value most.
Local news organizations also have a unique capability to build and amplify asense of community. These dynamics provide advertisers confidence that theirmessage is associated with content that is meaningful to a local community,
bearing out the maxim “all advertising is local.”Community news is also well situated to take advantage of “riches in niches,”
which stem from its understanding of local audiences. By catering to theinterests and history of communities and their institutions, both local and national
brands are better able to breakthrough to potential customers.

35

It is one of the truisms of advertising that context matters, because context is
likely to affect consumer recall, brand perception, and the level of resulting sales.
According to Horst Stipp at the Advertising Research Foundation, “positiveeffects have been shown when ads are placed in a context that consumers are
involved in, pay attention to and value, as well as when there is an alignment
between the context and the ad message.97
Whether local news stories report on nearby hiking options, flu hotspots, or
agricultural trends in rural communities, both local and national businesses andbrands can trust that their ads will be placed next to content that is relevant andmeaningful to local communities. Sports apparel stores seeking avid hikers,
pharmacies following flu trends, or banks seeking customers interested inagricultural financing will be able to find customers through local news that isreporting on matters those niches care about. Put another way, local news has
already found the niches and subgroups in their communities—and the stories
that matter to them—helping advertisers make a deeper connection with potential
customers.
Joy Baer, the president of Freewheel Advertisers, a media and technology
company focused on digital video advertising, describes the importance of local
marketing as having “long been the secret sauce in achieving true audience
penetration and lift for brands. We know that the consumer responds better to a
local experience.”98
George Bartell, chairman ofBartell Drugs, describes thevalue of local journalism thisway:

“As a regional network of drug
stores with deep roots in ourcommunity, and competing against
national chains, we can’t be justanother ad you see on the Internet.
Our brand stands for the Bartellfamily’s commitment to the healthof our community. To this day,
we’ve found that local news
remains one of the best media tocarry our message and represent
our brand.”George D. Bartell
Chairman, Bartell Drugs

36

Similarly, according to Ad Age, an advertising industry news publication, even forsome of the largest national brands, local marketing is a key part of theirstrategy.99
These statements reflect the fact that local news can see a return of revenue
growth for digital advertising and subscriptions, but it needs a level playing field.
According to FTI Consulting, a management consulting group that specializes in
the media industry, local newspaper digital advertising is forecast to grow in the
coming years.100

Local Newspaper Digital Advertising is Forecast to Grow by Approximately
40% between 2020 and 2024

Local Newspaper Digital Advertising
8.0B
7.1B
6.7B

7.0B
6.1B
5.7B

6.0B
5.2B
4.6B

5.0B

4.9B

4.3B
4.0B
4.0B

3.4B

3.7B

3.0B

2.0B

1.0B

0.0B
2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

37

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

Newspapers also continue to gain digital subscribers. As highlighted below,
between 2015 and 2018, the compound annual growth rate (“CAGR”) of LA
Times digital subscribers was 47.9 percent.101
Between 2015 and 2018, Leading Newspapers Significantly Increased
Digital Subscribers

2014 - 2018 Digital Sub CAGR Growth
60.0%

50.0%

47.9%
42.4%

40.0%

36.1%
29.0%

30.0%

25.7%

20.0%

10.0%

LA Times

Gannett (post-merger)

McClatchy

TribuneBoston Globe

Being a hub of community engagement makes local news attractive toadvertisers. Whether it is live concerts, speaking events, or neighborhood fairs,
newspapers can inform their readers about upcoming events and, at the sametime, boost turnout by publicizing them.
In doing so, local news can serve their readers while earning revenues throughassociated advertising or event sponsorship. By associating their brand withpopular community activities, local news organizations build increased customer
loyalty, which once again pays off in higher engagement, advertising
impressions, and subscription revenue.

38

In 2013, Evan Smith, editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, described an emerging
revenue model based on sponsored community events as follows: “It’s a fantastic
model. Sponsorship pays most of the bills for these events.” He went on to
explain that he expected to earn over a $1 million in revenue from communityoriented events and related advertising and sponsorship deals.102
This trend has grown since then.
According to one industry analyst,
income from commercial andcommunity events may be an
important revenue component going
forward, potentially reaching as high as
15 percent of overall industry
revenues.103

Income from commercial andcommunity events could reachas high as 15 percent of overall
industry revenues

In each community, certain unique niches exist that only a local organization canbe expected to fully understand. For example, the Wilmington Star-News,
another North Carolina publication, increased its digital subscriptions by 72
percent when it began hosting readers
at local in-person events, among otherinitiatives.104 When the COVID-19
The Wilmington Star-News
pandemic restricted large gatherings,
increased its digital subscriptions
the Star-News began sponsoring aby 72% by hosting newseries of drive-in movies called
community activities
Curbside Cinema.105
Further illustrating this point, in 2016, a small-market newspaper in Longview,
Texas—the News Journal—created a new music and food festival called
Rockers, Riders & Ribs, which has generated significant revenue for the paper
every year since. The newspaper’s advertising director Larry Jobe described it
as “a 13th month of revenue for us in one day.”106
Other types of events focus on deepening community ties and establishing newpartnerships. KING 5 News in Washington state, for example, developed a long
relationship with Northwest Harvest, a non-profit organization dedicated tofighting hunger across the state, and many different local and national brands.
KING 5 broadcasts live from several locations, showcasing the work of Northwest
Harvest volunteers and staff collecting food and funds, at its largest one-day
benefit of the year.107 Companies such as Safeway, AT&T, and Kaiser
Permanente have sponsored the event in previous years.108 All the participants
benefit—Northwest Harvest benefits from the publicity it receives from working
with a broadcaster like KING 5; the sponsoring brands have the opportunity to39

partner with an organization benefiting the community and a trusted news
source; and KING 5 can deepen its ties with the community and local
businesses. All this activity allows Northwest Harvest to serve more needyfamilies that benefit from its services. In this example, the role of the local
broadcaster as a trusted source of news is key in bringing the sponsoring
parties—and the community—together.
Although strategies based on sponsoring community events have been working
well for large and small local news organizations around the country for several
years, the COVID-19 pandemic has limited their effectiveness for the time being.
Many news organizations are now pivoting to virtual events.109
At the same time that advertisers are increasingly recognizing the value of local
new sources, some sellers are realizing that the core values of trust and relevant
content are not always present in other media sources.
A news article that turns up in an Internet search or a social media feed may not
be placed near relevant or appropriate content—and if it is not, the advertisingassociated with that article or website may suffer. Advertisers have recognized
this and have started to trade volume for better assurances of advertising value.
Procter & Gamble (“P&G”) reduced its spending on digital advertising by $200
million in 2017 due to concerns over the digital ad marketplace.110 In a speech to
the Association of National Advertisers Media Conference, Mark Pritchard,
P&G’s chief brand officer, said the decision to reduce online spending was due toquestions over the effectiveness of online advertising, lack of transparency, andfraud, which corresponds to “up to 20 percent of all online advertising.”111,112
Pritchard also expressed concerns that online advertisements were being shown
next to questionable content, stating: “it’s not acceptable for our brands to be
showing up where opioids are being offered, where illegal drugs are being
promoted, where abhorrent behavior is present or where violence is seen.”113
P&G is one of the world’s largest advertisers, spending $10.1 billion in 2018, andits trends and decisions are closely monitored by the broader advertisingindustry.114
Additionally, ads that intrude upon or disrupt the user experience—such as pop
ups and ads that automatically start with sound—are considered to be some of
the most frustrating to consumers.115 In response to proliferation of intrusive andunwanted ads, consumers have increasingly turned to ad blockers—
downloadable software that prevents ads from being shown in a browser or app.

40

In 2018, more than 70 million consumers in the United States used an ad
blocker.116

Adoption of Ad blockers Surpasses 25% of U.S. Internet Users

The trust deficit that plagues digital advertising stands in stark contrast to theconnection local news has with its audience.

New Digital Distribution Channels
Recognizing the dramatic shift to online information distribution, many local
newspapers and broadcasters are beginning to adopt innovative digital content
delivery and revenue models, which also helps increase subscription levels andreader engagement.
Most local papers have already gone online in some form and adjusted theircontent to be viewable on a smart phone. Many local outlets now offer readers anumber of choices of how to receive their online content, ranging from a browser
to a custom app to an e-book reader.

41

These new digital formats make it easier than ever for journalists to provide
engaging, on-demand content that consumers can access on their own schedule
in a much wider variety of contexts: while commuting, working out, or even doing
the dishes. For many local news organizations, harnessing new digital formats totime shift the delivery of their content greatly expands their ability to reach newcustomer segments and reinforce customer loyalty.
Regular podcasts, for example, have become a fixture of major metropolitan
newspapers’ digital strategy, including “The Daily” from the New York Times, theWashington Post’s “Post Report,”117 and several series from the LA Times.118
Smaller markets are also finding success with podcasting, including theProvidence Journal,119 the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,120 the Atlanta Journal
Constitution,121 and the Des Moines Register.122 These podcasts are usually notjust a recitation of newspaper articles akin to a book on tape; rather, they feature
a journalist sharing unique and factual expertise on a specific subject that adds
depth and context to complex issues facing communities and the nation.
As the following graphic illustrates, podcast advertising revenues have growntenfold since 2015, with news and politics enjoying the largest share of the soonto-be-billion-dollar market.

The Success of Podcast Advertising

Targeted email newsletters are another format that can be adopted to reach newcustomers and drive greater engagement and stickiness with consumers. These42

kinds of newsletters allow journalists to gear news content directly to individual
users with targeted subject matter or specific locations they are most interested
in, while circumventing the controlling influence of the web-based news
aggregators. Newspapers are able to offer newsletters for free on a daily or
weekly basis to anyone who signs up because they provide a vehicle forgenerating new ad revenues. They can also include links to additional content
available on a trial basis, which further generates advertising revenue and drives
subscription sales. For example, a newsletter focused on home improvement
ideas can include ads that show each reader the nearest supplier of home
improvement goods based on their individual location.
Email newsletters build customer loyalty and ultimately drive increasing
quantities of reliable advertising and subscription revenue as loyal customers
seek out additional sources of news content from their preferred sources.
Other Partnering and Revenue Models
All across the country, local journalism is pioneering innovative new partnerships
and revenue models to help adapt to the challenges it faces.
Some newspapers are working with commercial partners to monitor and quantify
user engagement with their stories and identify ways to differentiate theircontent.123 Others have joined with national non-profit media ventures to jointly
work on long-form investigative pieces that have traditionally served as a
backbone of local media.124 For example, ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network
has created a partnership between ProPublica and 20 news outlets across thecountry.125 In 2020, one of ProPublica’s local reporting partners, the Anchorage
Daily News, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its collaborative
work examining sexual violence in Alaska.126
In some cases, newspapers are borrowing a tactic from public television andcommunity radio by requesting donations directly from the readers who value
their content most. The international newspaper the Guardian, for instance,
includes a donation link at the bottom of each online article. More than one
million people have donated to the Guardian, helping the company achieve
profitability in 2019.127
Other local newspapers, like the Salt Lake Tribune, have found a path forward by
converting to a non-profit model.128 And other papers are using philanthropic
support around broad local reporting topics, or “beats.” 12943

Recently, a group of international news executives gathered online to evaluate
new ideas in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing transition todigital. They published a report summarizing several promising new strategies
for local journalism that are currently being put into use. These include: the useof artificial intelligence (“AI”) for optimizing article selection, page layout, andsubscription conversion; growing the work-from-home option, which can reducereal estate costs; and use of “trust indicators,” a set of eight attributes thatenhance credibility by helping readers understand the sourcing of news
articles.130
As discussed earlier, local news reports on issues of high concern to the public,
and the public trusts this reporting. National and local brands benefit from thetrust that local news has established with its audience. As Lisa Macpherson,
former consumer marketing executive and senior policy fellow at Public
Knowledge, put it: “At the heart of contemporary marketing is the ability to
deepen engagement with customers by understanding their needs and deliveringcontent they value and trust. News organizations have these capabilities and likesuccessful brands they can leverage them to create revenue. This includes
subscriptions or donations (depending on their business model), but it also
includes innovative new products and services at the intersection of communityand content.”

44

Lessons from Disruption of Other Media Industries
The rise of the digital age, with its shift in content consumption patterns,
establishment of new content gatekeepers, and challenges to intellectual
property protection and valuation, has disrupted other media industries as well.
Other media industries, like music and film, provide valuable lessons on thetimeframe and types of strategies local news can adapt to evolve their content
and its distribution to match new user expectations and meet the costs ofcreating it. In the face of a challenging transition, new laws, regulations, andinnovations have helped level the playing field in other media industries, enablingthem to overcome significant but surmountable hurdles in the transition to digital.
The Music Industry
An understanding of how the recorded music industry adapted to the digitalmusic revolution may prove instructive. From 1999 to 2015, recorded music
revenue in the United States decreased by more than half.131 CDs, once thedominant format, were largely replaced by a mix of downloads, subscriptions,and ad-supported streaming. Due to the popularity of peer-to-peer file-sharing
applications, many music fans were actually getting all the music they wanted forfree. Musicians and recording labels desperately needed to develop a newrevenue model to remain solvent. The situation mirrored the local news
industry’s current financial struggles in many ways.
By offering a host of new subscription and streaming services, the music industry
has reversed the precipitous drop in revenues that started late 1990s and, since2016, has seen four years of consecutive growth.132
As the following chart indicates, revenues are still roughly half of what they wereprior to widespread use of streaming music. But the industry’s recent successshows that, given time, a valued industry can adjust to structural changes thatupended historic business models.133

45

U.S. Recorded Music Industry Regains its
Footing After 15 Years of Losses in the Digital Age

Congress has done its part to facilitate the industry’s rebound. As the musicindustry worked to engage with the new platforms, issues related to streaming
and copyright emerged, prompting some government oversight and intervention.
In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) toaddress issues in music licensing related to new forms of broadcasting via
satellite and the internet.134 The DMCA enabled the creation of SoundExchange,a non-profit organization empowered to collect royalties for digital non-interactive
music broadcasts.135 To date, SoundExchange has distributed over $5 billion inmusic royalties.136

46

In 2018, the Music Modernization Act was signed into law to further streamline
and modernize how copyright royalties are determined and paid when musicalworks are streamed or distributed online.137,138,139 The law established the
Mechanical Licensing Collective which, beginning in January 2021, will issue andadminister licenses for eligible streaming and download services in the UnitedStates.140 This act will simplify the process for licensing digital works and serve
to ensure that fair payments are made for online use of music.141
The Movie Industry
The movie business is also facing a revolution in how its customers consume
and pay for its content. Like newspapers, the film industry has traditionally been
dependent on substantial physical infrastructure and goods—in its case, movie
theaters and movie purchases or rentals.
The following chart from the Motion Picture Association illustrates how Hollywood
has adapted to the transition to digital, which has grown fourfold since 2013 andis now the industry’s largest source of revenue:142

Digital Video Growth Makes Up For Other Industry Losses

Source: MPAA

47

Prior to the arrival of COVID-19 in early 2020, Hollywood was able to keep
traditional movie theater revenue steady by reducing the number of films
released to theaters and raising ticket prices. Although the transition to online
offerings has decimated the formerly lucrative DVD sales market, online sales
have more than made up the difference, resulting in relatively strong net growth
for the film industry over the last five years.
The transition to online revenue is not merely a change in format, such as thetransition from VHS to DVD was in the 1990s, but has involved a major rethinkingof how the industry should operate.
The following chart shows that within the film industry’s growing digital
distribution channel, subscription online services have been the key to success,with the number of subscriptions to services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime
doubling in the last three years.143

The Rise of Subscription Video Services has Proven Vital to
the Film Industry During the Transition to Digital

Source: MPAA
An important differentiator between the movie industry and local journalism isthat the content development side of the movie business is dominated by six
major studios, which have far more market power, both individually and as a
coalition, than the thousands of individual daily newspapers scattered throughout
the country. Consequently, the movie studios have real bargaining power with48

gatekeepers in key online distribution channels. Studios are also now expanding
vertically into distribution markets themselves.144 In addition, movie companies
had comparatively more time to prepare for the digital transformation because
the bandwidth requirements for music and movie files are significantly larger thanthose for print news media, which impeded online competition to some degree.
This gave the movie industry time to develop business models adapted to theInternet that have met with success today.

Local News Walloped by COVID-19
As the news industry was beginning to succeed at implementing steps to adapt
to the digital age, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, with a devastating effect on
local news outlets across the country. This is the second economic downturn
they have had to face in just a decade.
This past spring, radio broadcasters reported ad revenue declines between 4070 percent and local TV stations experienced drops of 40-60 percent.145 The
decline in revenue also has hit local newspapers particularly hard.146 Some
industry analysts have even described COVID-19 as a potential “extinction-level”
event.147
Almost half of newspapers have had to lay off or furlough employees, according
to the News Media Alliance in the last several months. FTI Consulting—a global
business advisory firm—projected an additional decline in print advertising
revenue for 2020 of up to 45 percent.148
The chart below projects that the newspaper industry will face an unrecovered
advertising revenue loss between 17 to 28 percent due to the COVID-19
pandemic through 2021.149

49

Projected Total Revenue Decline for Newspapers due to COVID-19

Industry Advertising Revenue Indexed to Q1 2019

Impact of COVID-19 | Newspaper Industry Advertising Revenue
105
100
95
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
55
50
45
40
2019
Q1

2019
Q2

Pre-COVID

2019
Q3

2019
Q4

2020
Q1

2020
Q2

2020
Q3

COVID Impacted - U Case

2020
Q4

2021
Q1

2021
Q2

2021
Q3

2021
Q4

COVID Impacted - V Case

For smaller local newspapers, the picture is particularly grim. Unlike major
newspapers with a national footprint and wide subscription and advertising base,local alternative papers rely almost entirely on lower-margin advertising revenue
from local merchants and event fees. These revenue streams for local news
have significantly declined due to the pandemic and the disproportionate impactof the economic crisis on locally-owned businesses.150 Since the COVID-19
outbreak, a number of these newspapers have suspended publication or shut
down completely.
The Stranger, a beloved local Seattle newspaper, had to lay off 18 employees
and discontinue publishing its bi-weekly print edition for the first time in 30 years
due to the pandemic.151 Subsequently, the Stranger began soliciting donations,
stating “90 percent of our revenue—advertising, ticketing fees, and our own
events—is directly tied to people getting together in groups. The coronavirus
situation has virtually eliminated this income all at once.”15250

Industry analysts Steven Waldman and Charles Sennott describe the current
financial condition of local journalism this way:153“In this moment, the bottom isfalling out economically for local
news organizations”
Steven Waldman andCharles Sennott
The Atlantic

Many of the remaining local newsrooms have been forced to cut or furlough staff
or shut down all together.154 According to Penelope Muse Abernathy at the
University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media, the“pandemic and the ensuing recession have greatly accelerated the loss of local
news that has been occurring over the past two decades.”155
The Poynter Institute has chronicled more than 50 newsroom closings due to the
COVID-19 crisis, including many newsrooms that have been in operation for
more than 100 years.156

51

One such closure was the Press & Journal, a Pennsylvania paper founded in
1854.157 The Press & Journal was a family business, spanning five generationsof the Fox, Graybill, and Sukle families.158 The final edition included the following
note to its readers:“Through good times and bad, we preserved our paper’s long tradition ofproviding independent journalism to this community. We leave behind areputation for fearlessly speaking truth to power and a proud legacy ofwatchdog reporting that served all its citizens… This newspaper has been
our life, our whole adult lives. There will be no knight on a white horse torush in and save the day, and we worry about the effect our closing will
have on the communities we cover. But, because of all of you, we wereable to publish a damn good local newspaper for a very, very long time.
As heartbroken as we are, we refuse to be bitter. We’re not going to go
out throwing stones. We gave it our best shot, and it’s been a great run.
And that’s how we’ll end this story. Thank you to one and all.”159

If local journalism is to have a chance to complete the adaptation of its businessmodel to the digital age, it will first need to survive COVID-19.

52

V. CONGRESSIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
The country’s Founders and successive Congresses have a long track record of helping
local journalism reach American citizens and supporting a healthy and diverse news
sector without threatening the freedom of the press from governmental influence.
Our Founding Fathers recognized that democracy could not succeed without an
informed public. Thomas Jefferson was stark in his assessment of the need fornewspapers, writing:160“The basis of our governments
being the opinion of the people, thevery first object should be to keepthat right; and were it left to me todecide whether we should have agovernment without newspapers, ornewspapers without a government,
I should not hesitate a moment toprefer the latter.”Thomas Jefferson (1787)

Jefferson’s commitment to a thriving press is evident in many of his writings,
where he argued that a free press was essential to an informed citizenry, andwithout an informed citizenry, government would be more abusive and corrupt. 161

53

James Madison, too, argued forcefully for the need for widespread disseminationof information. In the years after his presidency, Madison warned of the risks ofgoverning without a vibrant press. He wrote:162“A popular Government,
without popular information, or
the means of acquiring it, isbut a Prologue to a Farce or a
tragedy; or, perhaps both.”
James Madison (1822)

It should come as no surprise that the Founders supported local news—at thedawn of the country’s founding, local newspapers provided the primary source of
information about America’s struggle for independence and self-governance.163

Congress has a Long History of Supporting Local Journalism
The country’s reliance on local journalism has been recognized and supported by
Congress since its earliest days. For more than 200 years, Congress has
supported the dissemination of the news.
Besides upholding the bedrock principle of freedom of the press, which has
helped ensure the independence and trustworthiness of local media, Congresshas also provided financial support in recognition of the importance of local
journalism to our economy, citizenry, and preservation of our nation’s cherishedinstitutions.
A primary example of this support has been allowing newspapers and magazines
to travel through the mail at extremely low postage rates. Congress legislated
low postal rates on periodicals even when it resulted in net losses to the Postal
Service.164
Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) have also
supported local journalism and a diversity of media voices through tailored
antitrust and media ownership rules, among a host of other activities.165
54Current and Suggested Congressional Considerations to Save Local
News
Congress has a vital role to play in helping reverse the alarming decline in local
journalism, particularly in light of the hardships resulting from the global healthpandemic and the resulting economic fallout. To achieve this goal, Congressshould consider a number of possible approaches.
Providing COVID-19 Emergency Financial Relief
As discussed in this report, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating
impact on local media outlets around the country. Congress should provide
immediate support to stabilize these critical community institutions because it isvery difficult to recreate a functioning local newsroom once its unique blend ofknowledgeable local reporters, editorial controls, and regional subscribers is lost.
Congress should renew the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), created by theCoronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, to continue tosupport jobs at local news outlets. It should also expand the PPP to makethousands more local newspapers, radio, and television broadcasters eligible for
emergency federal support.
Congress should also consider targeted tax incentives and grants as at least ashort-term bridge to enable local news entities to survive the current economic
turmoil.
Ensure Fair Return for Local News Content
Local news outlets create unmatched trusted content for local communities but,
as discussed in this report, they are not being fairly compensated for theirintellectual property by news aggregators, who are abusing their dominantpositions in the marketplace.
Congress should consider requiring that news aggregation platforms enter into
good faith negotiations with local news organizations and pay them fair market
value for their content. Congress should also consider allowing local news
organizations for a limited duration to collectively bargain for reuse of theircontent, provided there are strong controls in place to ensure that smaller
publishers are not left behind.

55

Level the Playing Field for Local NewsAs detailed in this report, news aggregation platforms are using their market
power and data aggregation practices to disadvantage local news.
Congress has a long history of addressing market abuses that stifle innovationand harm consumers. Rules preventing unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices
can stop platforms from taking local news content without financial payment andretaliating against local news by hiding or removing their content from searchengines or social media feeds. Similarly, statutes that prohibit market
manipulation in other industries can serve as models to ensure online advertisingmarkets are transparent and not contrived to benefit a dominant firm. Federal
privacy protections can also serve to empower consumers to provide more
support to local news organizations that provide them with more trusted andrelevant information. Each of these changes should be crafted in a way topromote competition and consumer welfare and spur growth and innovation in
the digital economy.

56

VI. CONCLUSION
The restoration of local journalism is vitally important, not only to our democracy
as the Founders envisioned it, but also to the well-being of the nation and local
communities. The importance is especially stark as our nation confronts a healthemergency, an economic crisis, and a period of fierce debate over how tonavigate a changing world in order to build a more perfect union.
Local news plays an important role in binding communities together—chronicling
the challenges and triumphs of towns large and small, holding local government
officials accountable, improving market information, and reporting on the issues
that are most pressing to local communities.
Local news stories showcase the bravery of first responders, the selflessness ofhealthcare workers, the struggles of small business owners, and chronicle life
events, such as Little League games, school honor rolls, graduations, business
openings and closings, and obituaries. Local news is often the de facto historical
record of each town and, as part of its fabric, helps keep the community
connected. When local newspapers and broadcasters shutter, entire cities areleft wanting, and an important long-term relationship of trust and community spirit
is lost.
This report detailed the severe challenges faced by local journalism due to masstransfer of content and advertising online and the ability of a few Internet
platforms to accumulate the vast majority of the revenues derived from that
content. Platforms’ continued practice of taking publishers’ online content
without proper compensation, diverting user traffic away from local news
websites, and using formats like AMP to obtain data about local news customers
are unfair and abusive practices the FTC needs to enforce against.
While local news outlets have taken many steps to modernize their businessmodels for the Internet age, they need help from Congress to survive thepandemic and level a playing field that is severely tilted in favor of the online
platforms.

57

Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, “Finally some good news: Trust in news is up, especially for local media,” Poynter
Institute (August 22, 2018).
1

John Sands, “Local News is More Trusted than National News—but that Could Change,” Knight Foundation(October 29, 2019), available at https://knightfoundation.org/articles/local-news-is-more-trusted-than-national-newsbut-that-could-change/.
2“For Local News, Americans Embrace Digital but Still Want Strong Community Connection,” Pew ResearchCenter (March 26, 2020), available at https://www.journalism.org/2019/03/26/for-local-news-americans-embracedigital-but-still-want-strong-community-connection/.
3

See e.g., Peter Wagner, “A leading publisher's prescription for community newspapers: Continuity, cooperation,
credibility and commitment,” The Rural Blog (July 2019), available at http://irjci.blogspot.com/p/ruralnewspapers.html?m=1.
4

Carol Sue Humphrey, “The American Revolution and the Press: The Promise of Independence,” Northwestern
University Press (2013), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv47wcc8.
5“As Americans Cope with COVID-19, New Research Finds a Renewed Focus on Local News and Businesses,”
Horowitz Research (April 1, 2020), available at http://www.horowitzresearch.com/insights/as-americans-cope-withcovid19-a-renewed-focus-on-local/.
6

7

Id.

Ken Doctor, “Newsonomics: What was once unthinkable is quickly becoming reality in the destruction of local
news” NiemanLab (March 27, 2020), available at https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/03/newsonomics-what-wasonce-unthinkable-is-quickly-becoming-reality-in-the-destruction-of-local-news/.
8

9

Id.

10

Id.

11

Jon Lafayette, Virus Crisis Bringing Young Viewers to Local Broadcast, Broadcasting+Cable (Mar. 24, 2020).

Gentzkow, Matthew and Jesse M. Shapiro, “Competition and Truth in the Market for News,” Journal of
Economic Perspectives, vol. 22, no. 2 (Spring 2008), available athttps://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/jepmedia.pdf.
12

13

Louis Brandeis, “Other People's Money—and How Bankers Use It” (1914).

Anya Schiffrin, “Book aims to pin down economic return on investigative reporting,” Investigative Reporters andEditors (April 19, 2017), available at https://www.ire.org/archives/30565.
14

Loren Cochran, “Q&A with a frequent FOIA requestor,” The News Media & The Law (Summer 2006) pg. 26,
available at https://www.rcfp.org/journals/the-news-media-and-the-law-summer-2006/qa-frequent-foia-requester/.
15

Evan Bush, “10 stories from public records that stand out on Freedom of Information Day,” Seattle Times (March
16, 2016), available at https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/10-stories-from-public-records-that-stand-out-onfreedom-of-information-day/.
16

Gene Balk, “How long is too long to wait for help when you call 911?” Seattle Times (January 4, 2016), available
at https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/how-long-is-too-long-to-wait-after-calling-911/.
17

18

Id.

19

Id..

Gao, Pengjie, Chang Lee, and Dermot Murphy, “Financing Dies in Darkness? The Impact of Newspaper Closures
on Public Finance,” Journal of Financial Economics, (2020) vol. 135, no. 2, 445-467, 71 pages (May 15, 2018;
revised: February 2, 2020; written: October 18, 2018); available athttps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555.
20

Mary Ellen Klas, “Less Local News Means Less Democracy,” Nieman Reports (September 20, 2019), available athttps://niemanreports.org/articles/less-local-news-means-less-democracy/.
21

Erin Simpson, “Nation without Place: Does Local News Decline Cause Democratic Dysfunction in theContemporary United States?” Master's thesis, University of Oxford (2019), abstract available at2258https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e43b083-0dca-4348-afdb-70b5041db04a.
“American Views 2020: Trust, Media, and Democracy,” Knight Foundation & Gallup (August 4, 2020), available
at http://kf.org/usviews20.
23

April Simpson, “As Local News Outlets Shutter, Rural America Suffers Most,” Pew Research Center (October
21, 2019), available at https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2019/10/21/as-localnews-outlets-shutter-rural-america-suffers-most.
24

Campa, Pamela, “Press and leaks: Do newspapers reduce toxic emissions?,” Journal of Environmental Economics
and Management, Volume 91, Pages 184-202 (September 2018), available athttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0095069616301371?via%3Dihub.
25

F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” The American Economic Review (September 1945), available
at: https://www.kysq.org/docs/Hayek_45.pdf.
26

Robert J. Shiller, “Human Behavior and the Efficiency of the Financial System,” Handbook of Macroeconomics(1998), available at https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.67.1434.
27

28

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2001, NobelPrize.org, Nobel
Media AB 2020 (August 7, 2020), available at https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economicsciences/2001/summary/.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, “The Contributions of the Economics of Information to Twentieth Century Economics,” The
Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 115, no. 4 (2000): 1441-478, available at www.jstor.org/stable/2586930.
29

Hong, Harrison and Marcin Kacperczyk, “Competition and Bias,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 125,
no. 4 (November 2010), available at https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/125/4/1683/1916282.
30“Putting a Price Tag on Local News: Americans’ Perception of the Value and Financial Future of Local News,”
Knight Foundation & Gallup (2019), available at https://knightfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Puttinga-Price-Tag-on-Local-News-final-updated.pdf.
31

32

Id.

Chao, Becky and Claire Park, “The Cost of Connectivity 2020,” New America Open Technology Institute (July15, 2020), available at https://www.newamerica.org/oti/reports/cost-connectivity-2020/.
33

34

Robert Seamans and Feng Zhu, Responses to Entry in Multi-Sided Markets: The Impact of Craigslist on Local
Newspapers, Management Science, Feb. 2014, 476, 477, available at http://fengzhu.info/craigslist.pdf.
35

European Commission Staff Working Document: Impact Assessment on the Modernisation of EU Copyright
Rules (September 14, 2016), available athttps://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/596835/IPOL_BRI(2017)596835_EN.pdf.
36

N. Mele, 2018. Digital Platforms, Journalism & Information (class presentation, Harvard Kennedy School).

“US Programmatic Ad Spending Forecast 2019,” eMarketer (April 25, 2019), available athttps://www.emarketer.com/content/us-programmatic-ad-spending-forecast-2019/.
37

38

Id.

39

Staff conversation with stakeholder on August 1, 2020.

Omar Oakes, “Programmatic Market a 'Mess' with Half of Money Still Not Reaching Publishers,” Campaign(May 6, 2020), available at https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/programmatic-market-mess-half-money-notreaching-publishers/1682381.
40

Chris Welch, “Facebook may have knowingly inflated its video metrics for over a year,” The Verge (Oct. 17,2018), available at https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17989712/facebook-inaccurate-video-metrics-inflationlawsuit.
41

42

Id.

Fact Sheet: State of the News Media,” Pew Research Center (July 9, 2019), available athttps://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/.
43

44

Id.

45

Id.

46

The 70% revenue drop was calculated using the Pew Research Center’s Fact Sheet and the projections by FTI

59

Consulting. (See: “Fact Sheet - State of the News Media,” Pew Research Center (July 9, 2019), available athttps://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/; also see: Ken Harding, FTI Consulting,https://www.fticonsulting.com/industries/tmt/publishing.
47

All employment figures prior to 2020 were calculated based on methodology from the Pew Research Center using
data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (“BLS”). Because the BLS system reports national data, an average
ratio of newspaper employment to industry employment was applied to the figures for each state. For Delaware andMassachusetts, no data was available from 2004-2006; 2007 numbers have been substituted. For 2020, a projection
was made by combining the average change from 2019 with estimated losses due to closures and layoffs. Thisestimate only reflects data as of early September, and does not reflect any additional losses that may occur during
between October and December of 2020. The closure and layoff figures were calculated using data from the TOW
Center, Poynter, and the University of North Carolina's internal COVID tracking database. Where layoff numbers
were undisclosed, the numbers were estimated using averages from papers of similar size within the state. Credit forthe methodology developed for this chart goes to the Zachary Metzger and his colleagues at the University of North
Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
48

Id.

“Public Workshop on Competition in Television and Digital Advertising,” National Association of Broadcasters
to Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim (June 17, 2019), available athttps://www.nab.org/documents/filings/CommentsOnPublicWorkshopOnCompetitionInTelevisionandDigitalAdverti
sing(6-17-19).pdf.
49

50

Statement of the National Association of Broadcasters before the United States House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary (September 9, 2020).
“Newsroom Employment at U.S. Newspapers Dropped by 51% between 2008 and 2019,” Pew Research Center(April 17, 2020), available at https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroom-employment-hasdropped-by-a-quarter-since-2008/ft_2020-04-20_newsroomemployment_02/.
51

Kristen Hare, “Here are the newsroom layoffs, furloughs and closures caused by the coronavirus,” Poynter(September 4, 2020), available at https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/here-are-the-newsroom-layoffsfurloughs-and-closures-caused-by-the-coronavirus/.
52

53

Pew Research Center, supra note 51.

Richman, Dan and Andrea James, “Seattle P-I to publish last edition Tuesday,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, (March
16, 2009), https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Seattle-P-I-to-publish-last-edition-Tuesday-1302597.php.
54“Newspapers: Buyer Beware”, Forbes (April 8, 2008), available athttps://www.forbes.com/2008/04/07/newspapers-advertising-biz-media-cx_lh_0407papers.html#29a789315dfa.
55“Do You Live in a News Desert?” Hussmann School of Journalism and Media: Center for Innovation andSustainability in Local Media (updated June 10, 2020), available athttps://www.usnewsdeserts.com/#1536248669354-1611c5b7-c257.
56“Where are the Ethnic Voices?” Hussmann School of Journalism and Media: Center for Innovation andSustainability in Local Media (updated June 4, 2020), available athttps://www.usnewsdeserts.com/#1591281825217-2139af59-2beb.
57

Matthew Matsaganis, PhD, “New York City’s Ethnic Media in the Digital Age,” Center for Community andEthnic Media, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism (December 2016), available at
http://www.journalism.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/NYC-Ethnic-Media-in-the-DigitalAge_Matsaganis_Presentation-Slides_12082016.pdf.
58

Joan Walsh, “New America Media Is Closing—and That’s Bad News for All American Media,” The Nation(November 3, 2017), available at https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/new-america-media-is-closing-andthats-bad-news-for-all-american-media/.
59

See: Connecticut Law Tribune Editorial Board. “Crimes Against Blacks, Women Still Underreported in Media,”
Connecticut Law Tribune (February 21, 2020), available at https://www.law.com/ctlawtribune/2020/02/21/crimesagainst-blacks-women-still-underreported-in-media/; Safiya Charles, “Missing black women's cases are often
unsolved, underreported. Here are 7 from Montgomery,” Montgomery Advisor (November 15, 2019), available athttps://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2019/11/15/unsolved-missing-black-girls-women-casesunderreported-montgomery-county/4165154002/; Meredith Clark, “Coverage of black female victims of police
6060

brutality falls short,” USA Today (April 23, 2016), available athttps://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/spotlight/2016/04/22/police-violence-women-media/83044372/.
Daffodil Altan, “Ethnic Media in the U.S.: A Growing Force,” Frontline – PBS (February 27, 2007), available athttps://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/part3/ethnic.html.
61

Ken Doctor, “Newsonomics: Let the 2019 Consolidation Games begin! First up: Alden seeks to swallow
Gannett”, NiemanLab (January 14, 2019), available at https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/01/newsonomics-let-the2019-consolidation-games-begin-first-up-alden-seeks-to-swallow-gannett/.
62

Penelope Muse Abernathy, “Bigger and Bigger they Grow,” UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media,
accessed on September 5, 2020 at https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/reports/expanding-news-desert/loss-of-localnews/bigger-and-bigger-they-grow/.
63

Joe Pompeo, ”The Hedge Fund Vampire That Bleeds Newspapers Dry Now Has The Chicago Tribune by theThroat,” Vanity Fair (February 5, 2020), available at https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/hedge-fundvampire-alden-global-capital-that-bleeds-newspapers-dry-has-chicago-tribune-by-the-throat.
64

Ken Doctor, “Newsonomics: Alden Global Capital is making so much money wrecking local journalism it might
not want to stop anytime soon”, NiemanLab, (May 1, 2018), available athttps://www.niemanlab.org/2018/05/newsonomics-alden-global-capital-is-masking-so-much-money-wrecking-localjournalism-it-might-not-want-to-stop-anytime-soon/.
65

66

Id.

Julie Reynolds, “A Hedge Fund Stripped My Newspaper for Parts. Now, Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan to Fight
Back,” Newsweek (July 18, 2019), available at https://www.newsweek.com/hedge-fund-stripped-my-newspaperparts-now-elizabeth-warren-has-plan-fight-back-opinion-1450049.
67“ For Local News, Americans Embrace Digital but Still Want Strong Community Connection,” Pew ResearchCenter Journalism & Media (March 26, 2019), available at https://www.journalism.org/2019/03/26/for-local-newsamericans-embrace-digital-but-still-want-strong-community-connection/.
68

69

Id.

“Search Engine Market Share United States of America,” StatCounter (July 2020), available athttps://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/united-states-of-america.
70“Social Media Stats Worldwide — July 2019-July 2020,” StatCounter (July 2020), available athttps://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats.
71

Clara Hendrickson, "Local Journalism in Crisis: Why America Must Revive Its Local Newsrooms,” Brookings(November 12, 2019), available at at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Local-Journalism-inCrisis.pdf.
72“White Paper: How Google Abuses Its Position as a Market Dominant Platform to Strong-Arm News Publishers
and Hurt Journalism,” News Media Alliance (June, 19 2020), available athttps://www.newsmediaalliance.org/copyright-white-paper/.
73

Shearer, Elisa and Elizabeth Grieco, “Americans Are Wary of the Role Social Media Sites Play in Delivering theNews,” Pew Research (October 2, 2019), available at https://www.journalism.org/2019/10/02/americans-are-waryof-the-role-social-media-sites-play-in-delivering-the-news/.
74

Mullin, Benjamin and Sahil Patel, “Facebook Offers News Outlets Millions of Dollars a Year to License
Content,” Wall Street Journal (August 8, 2019), available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-offers-newsoutlets-millions-of-dollars-a-year-to-license-content-11565294575.
75

Alpert, Lukas I. and Sahil Patel, “With Facebook’s Coming News Tab, Only Some Will Get Paid” Wall Street
Journal (September 30, 2019), https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-facebooks-coming-news-tab-only-some-will-getpaid-11569852600.
76

77

Id.

Benjamin Mullin, “Google Pledges $1 Billion in Licensing Payments to News Publishers,” Wall Street Journal(October 1, 2020), available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-pledges-1-billion-in-licensing-payments-tonews-publishers-11601546401?st=xe5f2v2u30ooanp.
78

79

Id.

61

Matt Stoller, “Tech Companies Are Destroying Democracy and the Free Press,” New York Times (October 17,2019), available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/opinion/tech-monopoly-democracy-journalism.html; alsosee: Danny Sullivan, “Wall Street Journal’s Google traffic drops 44% after pulling out of First Click Free,” SearchEngine Land (June 5, 2017), available at https://searchengineland.com/wsj-google-traffic-down-276387.
80

Graham Ruddick, “Google to Ditch Controversial ‘First Click Free’ Policy,” The Guardian (October 2, 2017),
available at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/02/google-to-ditch-controversial-first-click-freepolicy.
81

Johannes Munter, “Google News Shutdown in Spain Was Not as Bad as Google Would Have You Believe,”
News Media Alliance (November 14, 2019), available at https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/google-newsshutdown-in-spain-not-as-bad-as-google-would-have-you -believe/.
82

83

Id.

84

Id.

Athey, Susan and Mark Mobius, “The Impact of News Aggregators on Internet News Consumption: The Case of
Localization,” Stanford Graduate School of Business (January 11, 2017), available athttps://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/impact-news-aggregators-internet-newsconsumption-case-localization.
85

J. Clement, “Share of Global Mobile Website Traffic 2015-2020,” Statista, (July 21, 2020), available athttps://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices.
86“How Google Abuses Its Position as a Market Dominant Platform to Strong- Arm News Publishers and Hurt
Journalism,” News Media Alliance (June 18, 2020), available at http://www.newsmediaalliance.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/06/Final-Alliance-White-Paper-June-18-2020.pdf.
87

88

Id.

89

Id.

Wang, Zhiheng and Doantam Phan, “Using Page Speed in Mobile Search Ranking,” Google Webmaster Central
Blog (January 17, 2018), available at https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/01/using-page-speed-in-mobilesearch.html; also see: Osmani, Addy and Ilya Grigorik, “UPDATE: Speed is Now a Landing Page Factor for
Google Search and Ads,” Google Webmaster (September 23, 2019), available athttps://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads-speed.
90

Keach Hagey and Vivien Ngo, “How Google Edged Out Rivals and Built the World’s Dominant Ad Machine: A
Visual Guide, The Wall Street Journal, (November 7, 2019), available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-googleedged-out-rivals-and-built-the-worlds-dominant-ad-machine-a-visual-guide-11573142071.
91“48 U.S. States Launch Antitrust Investigation into Google,” CBS News (September 10, 2019), available athttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-antitrust-probe-48-u-s-states-launch-antitrust-investigation-of-googledominance-in-search-ads-and-data/.
92

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, News Release: “Justice Department Sues Monopolist Google For
Violating Antitrust Laws” (October 20, 2020).
93

See e.g., Letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, “Joint Response to the House
Judiciary Committee on the State of Antitrust Law and Implications for Protecting Competition in Digital Markets,”(Apr. 30, 2020) available at file:///C:/Users/JB42552/Downloads/Joint-Response-to-the-House-JudiciaryCommittee-on-the-State-of-Antitrust-Law-and-Implications-for-Protecting-Competition-in-Digital-Markets.pdf.
94

95

Id.

96

Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, Pub. L. No. 102-385, 106 Stat. 1460
(codified in various sections of the Communications Act of 1934)
Paul Talbot, “Why Context Matters More Than Ever For Marketers,” Forbes (March 25, 2019), available athttps://www.forbes.com/sites/paultalbot/2019/03/25/why-context-matters-more-than-ever-formarketers/#2eac80374256.
97

Ad Age Studio, “Why Consumers for Big Brands Respond to Local Marketing,” Ad Age (November 26, 2018)available at https://adage.com/videos/big-brands-regional-markets/1579.
98

99

Id.

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100

Ken Harding, “US Newspaper Trends and Sustainability,” FTI Consulting (October 22, 2020).

101

Id.

Amy Scott, “Milking the conference cash cow”, MarketPlace.org, (September 12, 2013), available athttps://www.marketplace.org/2013/09/12/milking-conference-cash-cow/.
102

Ken Doctor, “Here are 20 epiphanies for the news business of the 2020s,” NiemanLab, (January 24, 2020),
available at https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/01/newsonomics-here-are-20-epiphanies-for-the-news-business-ofthe-2020s/.
103“By Serving as a target Audience of 45- to 64-year-olds, the Wilmington StarNews Increased its Readership andDigital Subscriptions,” Better News (May 2020), available at https://betternews.org/serving-targeted-audiencewilmington-starnews-increased-readership-digital-subscriptions-table-stakes/.
104“Event Details: Curbside Cinema: Ratatouille (sponsored in part by the Wilmington StarNews) on September 18,
2020,” Star News Online (accessed September 1, 2020), available athttps://www.starnewsonline.com/thingstodo?_ev_id=676712_curbside_cinema%3A_ratatouille.
105“Rockers, Riders & Ribs became 13th month of revenue for daily paper,” Southern Newspaper Publishers
Association (March 28, 2017), available at http://www.snpa.org/stories/rockers-riders-ribs-became-13th-month-ofrevenue-for-daily-paper,4129502.
106“Event Listing - KING 5 Home Team Harvest,” Northwest Harvest (December 7, 2019), available athttps://www.northwestharvest.org/htharvest.
107

108

Id.

John McCarthy, “Move it or lose it: now publishers run virtual events, do they hunger for a real return?” The
Drum (May 28, 2020), available at https://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/05/28/move-it-or-lose-it-now-publishersrun-virtual-events-do-they-hunger-real-return.
109

Suzanne Vranica, “P&G Contends Too Much Digital Ad Spending Is a Waste,” Wall Street Journal (March 1,
2018), available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/p-g-slashed-digital-ad-spending-by-another-100-million1519915621.
110

Jack Neff, “Procter & Gamble Makes the Biggest Ask Yet of Digital Media – Civility,” Ad Age (April 11, 2019),
available at https://adage.com/article/media/procter-gamble-makes-biggest-ask-yet-digital-media-civility/2164076.
111

Barrett J. Brunsman, “P&G Cracking down on Media Shenanigans, Ad Chief Says,” The Business Journals(January 30, 2017), available at https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/01/30/p-g-cracking-down-onmedia-shenanigans-ad-chief.html.
112

113

Id.

114

Id.

“The Research: Improving the Consumer Online Ad Experience,” Coalition for Better Ads, available athttps://www.betterads.org/research/.
115

Amy He, “Ad Blocking Growth is Slowing Down, but Not Going Away,” eMarketer (July 26, 2019), available athttps://www.emarketer.com/content/ad-blocking-growth-is-slowing-down-but-not-going-away.
116

Jaclyn Peiser, “Podcasts Are Getting Newsier. Here Are 8 New Ones Worth a Listen,” New York Times,(December 9, 2018), available at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/09/business/media/podcasts-daily-newsierwashington-post-npr.html
117

118

Los Angeles Times Podcast Creators & Networks, Chartable (accessed August 25, 2020), available athttps://chartable.com/creators/focus-features-la-times-studios.
Ken Doctor, “Newsonomics: Crimetown shows the podcast potential for local media partnership” (April 18,2017), available at: https://www.niemanlab.org/2017/04/newsonomics-crimetown-shows-the-podcast-potential-forlocal-media-partnership/.
119

120

“Podcast Index,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, available at https://www.jsonline.com/search/?q=podcast.

121“Podcasts and Alexa skills,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, available at https://www.ajc.com/podcasts/.

Jason Noble, “Three Tickets’ podcast: Catch up on the history of Iowa's Caucuses,” Des Moines Register(February 18, 2019), available at12263https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/09/30/three-tickets-iowacaucuses-podcast-debut-oct-8/73103038/.
“The Fastest News Gathering Technology for Publishers,” Newswhip (accessed August 25, 2020), available athttps://www.newswhip.com/media-solutions/.
123“About the Local Reporting Network,” ProPublica, available at https://www.propublica.org/about/localreporting-network.
124

125

Id.

126

Id.

Joshua Benton, “Want to see what one digital future for newspapers looks like? Look at The Guardian, which
isn’t losing money anymore,” Neiman Labs (May 1, 2019) available at https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/05/want-tosee-what-one-digital-future-for-newspapers-looks-like-look-at-the-guardian-which-isnt-losing-money-anymore/.
127

Christine Schmidt, “Meet the Salt Lake Tribune, 501(c)(3): The IRS has Granted Nonprofit Status to a Daily
Newspaper for the First Time,” Nieman Lab (November 4, 2019), available athttps://www.niemanlab.org/2019/11/meet-the-salt-lake-tribune-501c3-the-irs-has-granted-nonprofit-status-to-adaily-newspaper-for-the-first-time/.
128

Readers’ direct financial support also remains important. Initiatives such as the News Revenue Hub andMembership Puzzle Project have innovated in this area by pooling funds and knowledge. (See: Mark Glasser, “5Business Models for Local News to Watch in 2020,” Knight Foundation (January 7, 2020), available athttps://knightfoundation.org/articles/5-business-models-for-local-news-to-watch-in-2020/.; Also see: Hansen,
Elizabeth, Emily Roseman, Matthew Spector, and Joseph Lichterman, “Business Models for Local News: A Field
Scan,” Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy – Harvard Kennedy School (September 6, 2018),
available at https://shorensteincenter.org/business-models-field-scan/.; Also see News Revenue Hub athttps://fundjournalism.org/; the Membership Puzzle Fund at https://membershippuzzle.org/fund.)
129

Dean Roper, et al., “Publishers’ Response to 9 Strategic Challanges Post-Pandemic”, WAN-IFTRA, (July 9,2020) available at: https://www.wan-ifra.org/reports/2020/07/09/publishers-response-to-9-strategic-challenges-postpandemic; The Trust Project, “Learn the Eight Trust Indicators”, available at: https://
https://thetrustproject.org/trusted-journalism/.
130

Amy X. Wang, “For the first time in decades, music sales are growing again. Guess why?,” Quartz (April 12,2016), available at https://qz.com/660141/yes-music-sales-are-growing-again-but-they-are-still-half-of-what-theywere-in-1999/.
131“U.S. Recorded Music Revenues by Format,” Recording Industry Association of America (February 25, 2020),
available athttps://public.tableau.com/profile/riaa1295#!/vizhome/U_S_RecordedMusicRevenuesbyFormat_0/RevenuesbyForm
at.
132

133

U.S. Sales Database, Recording Industry Association of America, available at https://www.riaa.com/u-s-salesdatabase/.
Dana A. Scherer, “Money for Something: Music Licensing in the 21st Century”, Congressional ResearchService (June 7, 2018), available at: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43984
134

135

Id.

“SoundExchange Hits $5 Billion in Streaming Royalty Distributions”, SoundExchange Press Release (March 15,2018), available at: https://www.soundexchange.com/news/soundexchange-hits-5-billion-streaming-royaltydistributions/.
136

137

P.L.115–264.

Kevin Hickey, “The Music Modernization Act: Extending Copyright Protection to Pre-1972 Sound Recording,”
Congressional Research Service (October 15, 2018), available athttps://www.crs.gov/Reports/pdf/LSB10181?source=search&guid=a7f28064755d4be182f6434e6b9b4fbd&index=0.
138Dana A. Scherer, “Money for Something: Music Licensing in the 21st Century,” Congressional Research Service(June 7, 2018), available at https://www.crs.gov/Reports/R43984#_Toc516576618.
139

140

“About The MLC,” The Mechanical Licensing Collective, available at https://www.themlc.com/our-story.

64

“Musical Works Modernization Act,” Copyright Office, available at https://www.copyright.gov/musicmodernization/115/.
141“THEME Report 2019,” Motion Picture Association (March 2020), available athttps://www.motionpictures.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/MPA-THEME-2019.pdf (Note: charts have been
expanded to include data for 2013 and 2014 from the MPA’s 2017 THEME Report, available athttps://www.motionpictures.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/MPAA-THEME-Report-2017_Final.pdf.)
142

143

Id.

Hayes, Dade, Nellie Andreeva, and Dominic Patten, “Disruptor Of The Decade: How Streaming Changed
Everything And Will Do It Again In The 2020s,” Deadline (December 31, 2019), available athttps://deadline.com/2019/12/streaming-hollywood-disruptor-decade-netflix-amazon-disney-2020-outlook1202817648/.
144

145

Radio Ink, Just How Bad Is The Ad Revenue Decline? (May 7, 2020); Harry Jessell, Magid: Local TV To Feel
‘Devastating’ Ad Impact, TVNewsCheck (May 4, 2020).
Erika Bolstad, “COVID-19 Is Crushing Newspapers, Worsening Hunger for Accurate Information”, Pew
Research Center (September 8, 2020), available at: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-andanalysis/blogs/stateline/2020/09/08/covid-19-is-crushing-newspapers-worsening-hunger-for-accurate-information
146

Penelope Muse Abernathy, “News Deserts and Ghost Newspapers: Will Local News Survive?” UNC Hussman
School of Journalism and Media, available at https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/wpcontent/uploads/2020/06/2020_News_Deserts_and_Ghost_Newspapers.pdf (“Will our actions – or inactions – leadto an “extinction-level event” of local newspapers and other struggling news outlets, as predicted by some in theprofession”?); Matt DeRienzo, “A Recession, Then a Collapse,” Nieman Lab, 2017, available athttps://www.niemanlab.org/2017/12/a-recession-then-a-collapse.
147

148

Presentation, Ken Harding, FTI Consulting, https://www.fticonsulting.com/industries/tmt/publishing.

149

Id.

In messages to readers, the Stranger noted, “90% of our revenue—advertising, ticketing fees, and our own
events—is directly tied to people getting together in groups. The coronavirus situation has virtually eliminated thisincome all at once.” (See: Sarah Scire, “‘This Time is Different’: In Seattle, Social Distancing Forces The Stranger
to Make a Coronavirus Plea,” Nieman Lab (March 12, 2020), available at https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/03/thistime-is-different-in-seattle-social-distancing-forces-the-stranger-to-make-a-coronavirus-plea/.; Also see: Joshua
Benton, “‘Total Annihilation’: Coronavirus May Just be the End for Many Alt-weeklies,” NiemanLab (March 19,2020), available at https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/03/total-annihilation-coronavirus-may-just-be-the-end-formany-alt-weeklies/.)
150

Christopher Frizzelle, “The Stranger Temporarily Lays Off 18 Employees,” The Stranger (March 13, 2020),
available at https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/03/13/43143769/the-stranger-temporarily-lays-off-18employees.
151

152

The Stranger, Twitter (March 11, 2020), available athttps://twitter.com/TheStranger/status/1237827036736942080.
Steven Waldman and Charles Sennott, “The Coronavirus Is Killing Local News,” The Atlantic (Mar. 25, 2020),
available at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-killing-local-news/608695/.
153

Kristen Hare, “Here are the Newsroom Layoffs, Furloughs and Closures Caused by the Coronavirus,” Poynter,(August 11, 2020), available at https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/here-are-the-newsroom-layoffsfurloughs-and-closures-caused-by-the-coronavirus/.
154

Penelope Muse Abernathy, “News Deserts and Ghost Newspapers: Will Local News Survive?” UNC Hussman
School of Journalism and Media, available at https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/wpcontent/uploads/2020/06/2020_News_Deserts_and_Ghost_Newspapers.pdf.
155

Kristen Hare, “The coronavirus has closed more than 50 local newsrooms across America. And counting,”
Poynter, (August 20, 2020), available at https://www.poynter.org/locally/2020/the-coronavirus-has-closed-morethan-25-local-newsrooms-across-america-and-counting/.
156

157

Id.

158

Joe and Louise Suckle, “WE ARE HISTORY: This is goodbye as Press & Journal publishes its last edition,”

65

Press & Journal (July 3, 2020), available at https://www.pressandjournal.com/stories/we-are-history-this-isgoodbye-as-press-journal-publishes-its-last-edition,96666.
159

Id.

“Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787,” Founders Online, National Archives,
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-11-02-0047. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas
Jefferson, vol. 11, 1 January—6 August 1787, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955, pp.
48—50.]
160

M. Andrew Holowchak, “Did Thomas Jefferson Have a Consistent Message on Free Presses?” The George
Washington University Columbian College of Arts and Sciences — History News Network (Sept. 15, 2018),
available at https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169926.
161

162

Letter from James Madison to W. T. Barry, August 4, 1822, in Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James
Madison, Volume IX (New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), 103.
Carol Sue Humphrey, “The American Revolution and the Press: The Promise of Independence,” Northwestern
University Press (2013).
163

164

In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, requiring a number of types of mail,including newspapers, to bear their attributable costs, and limiting their future rate increases to the rate of inflation.
See: “Postage Rates for Periodicals: A Narrative History,” United States Postal Service (June 2010), available athttps://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/periodicals-postage-history.htm.
Dana A. Scherer, “The FCC’s Rules and Policies Regarding Media Ownership, Attribution, and Ownership
Diversity,” Congressional Research Service (December 16, 2016), available athttps://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43936.pdf.
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